This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. London: Routledge, 2009. For if the view is correct, then an explanation for why ones understanding why the painting is beautiful is richer, when it is, will simply be in terms of ones possession of a correct answer to the question of why it is beautiful. With each step in the sequence, we understand the motion of the planets better than we did before. ), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology. He also suggests that what epistemic agents want is not just to feel like they are making sense of things but to actually make sense of them. This is a change from the past. Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge (that is, "S knows that p") has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. While Pritchard can agree with Rohwers conclusion that understanding (and specifically as Rohwer is interested in, scientific understanding) is not a species of knowledge, the issue of adjudicating between Rohwers intuition in the case of unifying understanding and the diagnosis Pritchard will be committed to in such a case is complicated. This is the idea that one has shifted, or changed, the way he or she takes in knowledge. Section 3 examines the notion of grasping which often appears in discussions of understanding in epistemology. In short, then, Kvanvig wants to insist that the true beliefs that one attains in acquiring ones understanding can all be Gettiered, even though the Gettier-style luck which prevents these beliefs from qualifying as knowledge does not undermine the understanding this individual acquires. Bradford, G. The Value of Achievements. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2) (2013): 204-224. His central claim is that curiosity provides hope for a response-dependent or behaviour-centred explanation of the value of whatever curiosity involves or aims at. New York: Routledge, 2011. Make sure you cite them appropriately within your paper and list them in APA format on your Reference page. For a less concessionary critique of Kvanvigs Comanche case, however, see Grimm (2006). For example, I can understand the quadratic formula without knowing, or caring, about who introduced it. While Khalifa favors earlier accounts of scientific understanding to the more recent views that have been submitted by epistemologists, he is aware that some criticisms (for example, Lipton (2009) and Pritchard (2010)) to the effect that requiring knowledge of an explanation is too strong a necessary condition on understanding-why. Of course, though, just as Lackey (2007) raises creationist teacher style cases against knowledge transmission principles, one might as well raise a parallel kind of creationist teacher case against the thesis that one cannot attain understanding from a source who herself lacks it. Meanwhile, he suggests that were you to ask a fake fire officer who appeared to you to be a real officer and just happened to give the correct answer, it is no longer plausible (by Pritchards lights) that you have understanding-why. Is it problematic to embrace, for example, a contextualist semantics for knowledge attributions while embracing, say, invariantism about understanding? Much of the philosophical tradition has viewed the central epistemological problems concerning perception largely and sometimes exclusively in terms of the metaphysical responses to skepticism. Whether wisdom might be a type of understanding or understanding might be a component of wisdom is a fascinating question that can draw on both work in virtue ethics and epistemology. Keplers theory is a further advance in understanding, and the current theory is yet a further advance. Includes further discussion of the role of acceptance and belief in her view of understanding. Khalifa, K. Is Understanding Explanatory or Objectual? Synthese 190(6) (2013a): 1153-1171. To the extent that these worries with transparency are apt, a potential obstacle emerges for the prospects of accounting for the value of understanding in terms of its transparency. In fact, he claims, the two come apart in both directions: yielding knowledge without strong cognitive achievement andas in the case of understanding that lacks corresponding knowledgestrong cognitive achievement without knowledge. Since it is central to her take on human evolution, factivists like Kvanvig must conclude that her take on human evolution does not qualify as understanding. Description Recall that epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. In other words, one mistakenly take knowledge to be distinctively valuable only because knowledge often does have somethingcognitive achievementwhich is essential to understanding and which is finally valuable. By contrast, the paradigmatic case of environmental epistemic luck is the famous barn faade case (for example, Ginet 1975; Goldman 1979), a case where what an agent looks at is a genuine barn which unbeknownst to the individual is surrounded by faades which are indistinguishable to the agent from the genuine barn. Baker, L. R. Third Person Understanding in A. Sanford (ed. It will accordingly be helpful to narrow our focus to the varieties of understanding that feature most prominently in the epistemological literature. A novel interpretation of the traditional view according to which understanding-why can be explained in terms of knowledge of causes. If Hills is right about this connection between grasping and possessing abilities, it might seem as though understanding-why is, at the end of the day, very similar to knowing-how (see, however, Sullivan 2017 for resistance to this suggestion).. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. 2015 Jun;21(3):433-9. doi: 10.1111/jep.12282. and Pritchard, D. Varieties of Externalism. Philosophical Issues 41(1) (2014): 63-109. Finally, there is fruitful work to do concerning the relationship between understanding and wisdom. That said, the question of whether, and if so to what extent, understanding is compatible with epistemic luck, lacks any contemporary consensus, though this is an aspect of understanding that is receiving increased attention. Displacements of power in the realm of concepts accompany these new orientations. A view on which the psychics epistemic position in this case qualifies as understanding-why would be unsatisfactorily inclusive. Assuming that we need an account of degrees of understanding if we are going to give an account of outright understanding (as opposed to working the other way around, as he thinks many others are inclined to do), Kelp (2015) suggests we adopt a knowledge based account of objectual understanding according to which maximal understanding of a given phenomenon is to be cashed out in terms of fully comprehensive and maximally well-connected knowledge of that phenomenon. Strong cognitive achievement: Cognitive success that is because of ones cognitive ability where the success in question either involves the overcoming of a significant obstacle or the exercise of a significant level of cognitive ability. For example, Kvanvig (2003) holds that understanding is particularly valuable in part because it requires a special grasp of explanatory and other coherence-making relationships. Riggs (2003: 20) agrees, stating that understanding of a subject matter requires a deep appreciation, grasp or awareness of how its parts fit together, what role each one plays in the context of the whole, and of the role it plays in the larger scheme of things (italics added). If a grasping condition is necessary for understanding, does one satisfy this condition only when one exercises a grasping ability to reflect how things are in the world? Offers an account of understanding that requires having a theory of the relevant phenomenon. Argues that understanding (unlike knowledge) is a type of cognitive achievement and therefore of distinctive value. An overview of issues relating to epistemic value, including discussion of understanding as a higher epistemic state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Zagzebski, L. Recovering Understanding In M. Steup (ed. His central claim in his recent work is that understanding can be viewed as knowledge of causes, though appreciating how he is thinking of this takes some situating, given that the knowledge central to understanding is non-propositional. To this end, the first section offers an overview of the different types of understanding discussed in the literature, though their features are gradually explored in more depth throughout later sections. A useful taxonomising question is the following: how strong a link does understanding demand between the beliefs we have about a given subject matter and the propositions that are true of that subject matter? It seems as though understanding would possibly be undermined in a case where someone relying on the ideal gas law failed to appreciate it as an idealization. Grimm, S. Understanding as Knowledge of Causes in A. Fairweather (ed. Email: emma.gordon@ed.ac.uk On the one hand, we have manipulationists, who think understanding involves an ability (or abilities) to manipulate certain representations or concepts. security guard 12 hour shifts aubrey pearsons oaks husband epistemological shift pros and cons. A., Kallestrup, J. Palermos, S.O. Grimm, S. Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2006): 515-535. Positivism follows an identical approach as the study of natural sciences in the testing of a theory. Dordecht: Springer, 2014. Autore dell'articolo: Articolo pubblicato: 16/06/2022 Categoria dell'articolo: fixed gantry vs moving gantry cnc Commenti dell'articolo: andy's dopey transposition cipher andy's dopey transposition cipher Zagzebski does not mean to say that to understand X, one must also understand ones own understanding of X (as this threatens a psychologically implausible regress), but rather, that to understand X one must also understand that one understands X. A good example here is what Riggs (2003) calls intelligibility, a close cousin of understanding that also implies a grasp of order, pattern and connection, but does not seem to require a substantial connection to truth. Elgin, C. Z. 1. As Wilkenfeld sees it, understanding should be construed as representational manipulability, which is to say that understanding is, essentially, the possessing of some representation that can be manipulated in useful ways. Toon, A. Zagzebski (2001), whose view maintains that at least not all cases of understanding require true beliefs, gestures to something like this view. Here, and unlike in the case of intervening epistemic luck, nothing actually goes awry, and the fact that the belief could easily have been false is owed entirely to the agents being in a bad environment, one with faades nearby. For example, Hills (2009: 4) says you cannot understand why p if p is false (compare: S knows that p only if p). It is also becoming an increasingly popular position to hold that understanding is more epistemically valuable than knowledge (see Kvanvig 2003; Pritchard 2010). The notion of curiosity that plays a role in Kvanvigs line is a broadly inclusive one that is meant to include not just obvious problem-solving examples but also what he calls more spontaneous examples, such as turning around to see what caused a noise you just heard. Unsurprisingly, the comparison between the nature of understanding as opposed to knowledge has coincided with comparisons of their respective epistemic value, particularly since Kvanvig (2003) first defended the epistemic value of the latter to the former. For that reason, these will be addressed before moving on to the more explicitly epistemological concerns. However, the core explanationist insight also offers the resources to supplement a grasping account. Achievements, unlike mere successes, are regarded as valuable for their own sake, mainly because of the way in which these special sorts of successes come to be. So the kind of knowledge that it provides is metaknowledgeknowledge about knowledge. epistemological shift pros and cons. The possession of such judgment plausibly lines up more closely with ability possession (that is, (i)-(vi)) than with propositional attitude possession. In such a case, Kvanvig says, this individual acquires an historical understanding of the Comanche dominance of the Southern plains of North America from the late 17th until the late 19th century (2003: 197). Kvanvig stipulates that there are no falsehoods in the relevant class of beliefs that this individual has acquired from the book, and also that she can correctly answer all relevant questions whilst confidently believing that she is expressing the truth. Perhaps the strongest of these is his suggestion that while the faculty of rational insight is indispensable to the grasping account of a priori, it is actually essential to knowledge of causes that it not be grasped through rational insight. He takes his account to be roughly in line with the laymans concept of curiosity. ), Virtue Epistemology Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. He suggests that manipulating the system allows the understander to see the way in which the manipulation influences (or fails to influence) other parts of the system (2011: 11). DePaul, M. and Grimm, S. Review Essay: Kvanvigs The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007): 498-514. Finally, Section 6 proposes various potential avenues for future research, with an eye towards anticipating how considerations relating to understanding might shed light on a range of live debates elsewhere in epistemology and in philosophy more generally. Argues that we should replace the main developed accounts of understanding with earlier accounts of scientific explanation. Although the analysis of the value of epistemic states has roots in Plato and Aristotle, this renewed and more intense interest was initially inspired by two coinciding trends in epistemology. Grimm, S. Understanding In S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds. Introduces intelligibility as an epistemic state similar to understanding but less valuable. In the study of epistemology, philosophers are concerned with the epistemological shift. Should we say that the use of the term understanding that applies to such cases should be of no interest to epistemology? Must they be known or can they be Gettiered true beliefs? south east england accent; spend billionaires money game; kaplan data entry work from home. One can split views on this question into roughly three positions that advocate varying strengths of a factivity constraint on objectual understanding. To complicate matters further, some of the philosophers who appear to endorse one approach over the other can elsewhere be seen considering a more mixed view (for example, Khalifa 2013b). Such a constraint would preserve the intuition that understanding is a particularly desirable epistemic good and would accordingly be untroubled by the issues highlighted for the weakest view outlined at the start of the section. (2007: 37-8). fort hood cif inprocessing; bucks county inspector of elections candidates; lockdown limerick poem; boeing seattle badge office. For example, if I competently grasp the relevant coherence-making and explanatory relations between propositions about chemistry which I believe and which are true but which I believed on an improper basis. 824 Words. Olsson, E. Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification in E. Zalta (ed. DePaul, M. Ugly Analysis and Value in A. Haddock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard (eds. And, thirdly, two questions about what is involved in grasping can easily be run together, but should be kept separate. Consider how some people think they grasp the ways in which their zodiac sign has an influence on their life path, yet their sense of understanding is at odds with the facts of the matter. There is arguably a further principled reason that an overly weak view of the factivity of understanding will not easily be squared with pretheoretical intuitions about understanding. One issue worth bringing into sharper focus is whether knowing a good and correct explanation is really the ideal form of understanding-why. Secondly, one might wonder if Wilkenfelds account of understanding as representation manipulation is too inclusivethat it rules in, as cases of bona fide understanding, representations that are based on inaccurate but internally consistent beliefs. As Zagzebski (2009: 141) remarks, different uses of understanding seem to mean so many different things that it is hard to identify the state that has been ignored (italics added). The topic of epistemic value has only relatively recently received sustained attention in mainstream epistemology. Her main supporting example is of understanding the rate at which objects in a vacuum fall toward the earth (that is, 32 feet per second), a belief that ignores the gravitational attraction of everything except the earth and so is therefore not true. Take first the object question. To the extent that this is right, Zagzebski is endorsing a kind of KU principle (compare: KK). Contrast thiscall it the intervening reading of the casewith Pritchards corresponding environmental reading of the case, where we are to imagine that the agent is reading a reliable academic book which is the source of many true beliefs she acquires about the Comanche. Carter, J. Usually philosophical problems are overcome not by their resolution but rather by redefinition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. However, Pritchards work on epistemic luck (for example, 2005) and how it is incompatible with knowledge leads him to reason that understanding is immune to some but not all forms of malignant luck (that is, luck which is incompatible with knowledge). Grimm (2011) also advocates for a fairly straightforward manipulationist approach in earlier work. as in testimony cases in friendly environments, where knowledge acquisition demands very little on the part of the agent), he argues that cognitive achievement is not essentially wedded to knowledge (as robust virtue epistemologists would hold). His conception of mental representations defines these representations as computational structures with content that are susceptible to mental transformations. Wilkenfeld constructs a necessary condition on objectual understanding around this definition. A paper in which it is argued that (contrary to popular opinion) knowledge does not exclude luck. Lucky Understanding Without Knowledge. Synthese 191 (2014): 945-959. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. 1pt1): pp. Khalifas (2013) view of understanding is a form of explanatory idealism. Orand this is a point that has received little attentioneven more weakly, can the true beliefs be themselves unreliably formed or held on the basis of bad reasons. Your paper should be 3-4 pages in length, not counting the Title page and Reference . On such an interpretation, explanationism can be construed as offering a simple answer to the object question discussed above: the object of understanding-relevant grasping would, on this view, be explanations. The Problem of the External World 2. It should be noted that Hills 2009: 7 is also sympathetic to a similar thought, suggesting that the threshold for understanding might be contextually determined. Argues against compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. Pritchards assessment then of whether understanding is compatible with epistemic luck that is incompatible with knowledge depends on which kind of epistemic luck incompatible with knowledge one is discussing. On the basis of considerations Pritchard argues for in various places (2010; 2012; 2013; 2014), relating to cognitive achievements presence in the absence of knowledge (for example. Grimm (2012) has wondered whether this view might get things explanatorily backwards. However, such a strong view would also make understanding nearly unobtainable and surely very rarefor example, on the extremely strong proposal under consideration, recognized experts in a field would be denied understanding if they had a single false belief about some very minor aspect of the subject matter. In order to illustrate this point, Kvanvig invites us to imagine a case where an individual reads a book on the Comanche tribe, and she thereby acquires a belief set about the Comanche. ), Epistemic Value. The conspiracy theorist possesses something which one who grasps (rather than grasps*) a correct theory also possesses, and yet one who fails to grasp* even the conspiracy theory (for example, a would-be conspiracy theorist who has yet to form a coherent picture of how the false propositions fit together) lacks. Grimm develops this original position via parity of reasoning, taking as a starting point that the debate about a priori knowledge, for example, knowledge of necessary truths, makes use of metaphors of grasping and seeing that are akin to the ones in the understanding debate. What is Justified Belief? In G. S. Pappas (ed. Grimm (2011) suggests that what we should regard as being understood in cases of objectual understandingnamely, the object of the objectual attitude relationcan be helpfully thought of as akin to a system or structure [that has] parts or elements that depend upon one another in various ways.. Contrary to premise (3), such abilities (of the sort referenced by Khalifa in premise 2 and 3) arguably need not involve discriminating between explanations, so long as one supposes that discriminating between explanations is something one has the reliable ability to do only if one could not very easily form a belief of the form when this is false. Some (for example, Gordon 2012) suggest that attributions of propositional understanding typically involve attributes of propositional knowledge or a more comprehensive type of understandingunderstanding-why, or objectual understanding (these types are examined more closely below). Though her work on understanding is not limited to scientific understanding (for example, Elgin 2004), one notable argument she has made is framed to show that a factive conception cannot do justice to the cognitive contributions of science and that a more flexible conception can (2007: 32). For example, when the issue is understanding mathematics, as opposed to understanding why 22=4, it is perhaps less obvious that dependence has a central role to play. A potential worry then is that the achievement one attains when one understands chemistry need not involve the subject working the subject matterin this case, chemistryscause. Knowledge in a Social World. The cons of the epistemology shift that is a major concern to philosophers are the loss of, reading and communications since the student do not interact physically, these skills be instilled EPISTEMOLOGY SHIFT 5 by the teachers and through the help of physical environments. One point that could potentially invite criticism is the move from (1) and (2) to (3). When considering interesting features that might set understanding apart from propositional knowledge, the idea of grasping something is often mentioned. Zagzebski (2001) and Kvanvig (2003), have suggested that understandings immunity to being undermined by the kinds of epistemic luck which undermine knowledge is one of the most important ways in which understanding differs from knowledge. Section 4 examines the relationship between understanding and types of epistemic luck that are typically thought to undermine knowledge. Attempts to explain away the intuitions suggesting that lucky understanding is incompatible with epistemic luck. But is understanding factive? We regularly claim that people can understand everything from theories to pieces of technology, accounts of historical events and the psychology of other individuals. For one thing, abstract objects, such as mathematical truths and other atemporal phenomena, can plausibly be understood even though our understanding of them does not seem to require an appreciation of their coming to existence. This entry surveys the varieties of cognitive success, and some recent efforts to understand some of those varieties. Such cases she claims feature intervening luck that is compatible with understanding. Goldman, A. Resists Pritchards claim that there can be weak achievements, that is, ones that do not necessarily involve great effort. On the other hand, there are explanationists, who argue that it is knowledge or evaluation of explanations that is doing the relevant work. (iii) an ability to draw from the information that q the conclusion that p (or that probably p). That is, we often describe an individual as having a better understanding of a subject matter than some other person, perhaps when choosing whom to approach for advice or when looking for someone to teach us about a subject. Specifically, he points out that an omniscient agent who knows everything and intuitively therefore understands every phenomenon might do so while being entirely passivenot drawing interferences, making predictions or manipulating representations (in spite of knowing, for example, which propositions can be inferred from others). As Elgin (2007) notes, it is normal practice to attribute scientific understanding to individuals even when parts of the bodies of information that they endorse diverge somewhat from the truth. However, Pritchard (2014) responds to Grimms latest proposal with a number of criticisms. Examines reasons to suppose that attributions of understanding are typically attributions of knowledge, understanding-why or objectual understanding. Pritchard, D. Knowing the Answer, Understanding and Epistemic Value. Grazer Philosophische Studien 77 (2008): 325-39. Uses the concept of understanding to underwrite a theory of explanation. Firstly, achievement is often defined as success that is because of ability (see, for example, Greco 2007), where the most sensible interpretation of this claim is to see the because as signifying a casual-explanatory relationshipthis is, at least, the dominant view. One helpful way to think about this is as follows: if one takes a paradigmatic case of an individual who understands a subject matter thoroughly, and manipulates the credence the agent has toward the propositions constituting the subject matter, how low can one go before the agent no longer understands the subject matter in question? Morris challenges the assumption that hearers cannot gain understanding through the testimony of those who lack understanding, and accordingly, embraces a kind of understanding transmission principle that parallels the kind of knowledge transmission principle that is presently a topic of controversy in the epistemology of testimony. With these three types of understanding in mindpropositional understanding, understanding-why and objectual understandingthe next section considers some of the key questions that arise when one attempts to think about when, and under what conditions, understanding should be ascribed to epistemic agents. The medical epistemology we propose conforms to the epistemological responsibility of doctors, which involves a specific professional attitude and epistemological skills. If, as robust virtue epistemologists have often insisted, cognitive achievement is finally valuable (that is, as an instance of achievements more generally), and understanding necessarily lines up with cognitive achievement but knowledge only sometimes does, then the result is a revisionary story about epistemic value. Claims that understanding is entirely compatible with both intervening and environmental forms of veritic luck. Even so, and especially over the past decade, there has been agreement amongst most epistemologists working on epistemic value that that understanding is particularly valuable (though see Janvid 2012 for a rare dissenting voice). Moral Testimony and Moral Epistemology. Ethics 120 (2009): 94-127. For one thing, it is prudent to note up front that there are uses of understanding that, while important more generally in philosophy, fall outside the purview of mainstream epistemology. sustainability scholarship 2021; lost vape centaurus replacement panels; Most notably here is what we can call linguistic understandingnamely, the kind of understanding that is of particular interest to philosophers of language in connection with our competence with words and their meanings (see, for example, Longworth 2008). Pritchard, meanwhile, claims that the matter of understandings compatibility with epistemic luck can be appreciated only against the background of a distinction between two kinds of epistemic luckintervening and environmentalboth of which are incompatible with knowledge. Proposes a framework for reducing objectual understanding to what he calls explanatory understanding. For example, you read many of your books on screens and e-readers today. Divides recent views of understanding according to whether they are manipulationist or explanationst; argues for a different view according to which understanding is maximally well-connected knowledge.
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